Lab Weekly - 08/23/2024
Insights from the latest Futurecaster survey; Plus, thoughts on Google’s ‘Reimagine’ tool, Patreon creator backlash, and more latest news & stats
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Editor’s Note: The Lab will be taking next week off for our annual Employee Appreciation Week. We’ll be back in your inbox on Sep. 6th. For those of you in the U.S., have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!
Floor 9 - Episode 161: Futurecaster Survey & Must-Know Insights
In this special bonus episode of the month, the Lab’s strategy team assembles to discuss the highlights from the results of our latest Futurecaster survey!
Futurecaster is the Lab’s proprietary innovation tool that identifies how your audience is engaging with the tactical areas of innovation across emerging technologies and media channels. In partnership with Dynata, we survey 2,500 smartphone owners aged 16-74, asking them about their awareness, past and planned usage, and perception of emerging technologies and media channels.
This year, the results showed noteworthy developments across a wide range of innovation territories. For example, awareness of generative AI tools continues to grow, with 55% of respondents saying they have heard of them, up from 36% who said so last year.
Listen now to learn more about Futurecaster and the key insights we learned from this year’s survey. If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Thanks!
In case you missed it…
The Future of Real Estate
As people have adapted to new ways of living in this post-COVID era, their expectations and preferences for housing have also evolved. In tandem with broader economic changes, such as the end of Zero Interest Rate Policies (ZIRP) and shifts in mortgage rates, these evolving consumer trends are driving significant changes in the real estate market.
The Crucial Differentiator in the AI Search War
The burgeoning AI search war carries far-ranging implications for the future of the web and digital advertising. Everyone needs the latest news content to keep their AI search engines up-to-date, and access to quality content has become an increasingly important differentiation point.
What’s Next for the Entertainment Industry?
This summer has been one of turmoil and reorganization for Hollywood. Still recovering from the historical double-strikes that put the industry on pause last summer, the entertainment industry is trying to realign its streaming-led business model with the post-streaming-wars market reality. The streaming services are all in on ads, yet Hollywood needs to look both outward and inward to find its future.
The Google Pixel 9’s AI Camera Features Let You Reshape Reality [Wired]
As part of the new Gemini-led AI features released with the new Pixel 9 phones, Google’s AI ‘Reimagine’ tool is very good — perhaps a little too good. And it’s not just Google; popular AI image generator Midjourney just made itself more easily accessible to all users with a new website. As Sarah Jeong from The Verge puts it, our basic assumptions about photos capturing reality are about to go up in smoke, and no one is ready for it. Millennials’ motto of “pics or it didn’t happen” could soon become a relic of the pre-synthetic media era.
For brands and marketers, this potential sea change in how consumers perceive digital media and, by extension, our shared sense of reality, will likely raise new challenges in brand safety and consumer trust. In response, companies will need to invest in new tools and technologies to verify the authenticity of their content, ensuring that their brand is not inadvertently associated with manipulated media. This could involve partnerships with AI companies that specialize in content verification or the development of internal protocols to flag and address potentially harmful synthetic media.
Additionally, the rise of synthetic media may also compel brands to be more transparent about their use of AI in content creation. Brands that embrace this transparency, openly discussing how and when they use AI-generated imagery, may be able to maintain consumer trust. It’d be crucial to ensure that your AI use does not come across as a shortcut or a substitute for genuine creativity or the human touch.
Contrast Google’s hyper-photorealistic approach with Apple’s upcoming Image Playground tool, which enables users to generate images based on text prompts, but limits the image outputs to three preset cartoon-ish styles, one’d easily see why Apple took the more cautious approach to to circumvent the type of misuse that most text-to-image models have encountered.
Related: Google’s AI ‘Reimagine’ tool helped us add wrecks, disasters, and corpses to our photos [The Verge]; Midjourney opens website to all users, offering 25 free AI image generations [VentureBeat]
Apple Makes Enemies Among Creators With Its Patreon Decision [Business Insider]
Apple's recent decision to enforce a 30% fee on all in-app purchases made through Patreon's app has sparked a backlash among creators. In response, Patreon has offered creators two options: either raise in-app prices to cover the fee or absorb the cost. However, creators are more likely to direct fans to use the web platform instead, bypassing Apple’s cut. This move is part of Apple's broader application of its platform fee structure, which has been impacting creator platforms like Substack and Fanhouse for a few years.
This backlash underscores a broader tension within the creator economy, where platforms are increasingly caught between supporting their creators and complying with the policies of dominant gatekeepers, often at the expense of its own bottom line. The ongoing debate around the "Apple tax" on App Store purchases highlights the vulnerability of creators who build their businesses on platforms that can unilaterally change terms, potentially eroding their earnings. This dynamic may push creators to seek more control over their revenue streams by encouraging off-app transactions or exploring alternative platforms where they can thrive without being heavily taxed by gatekeepers.
Related: iPhone users in the EU can try these third-party app stores today [MacDaily News]; App Store VP departing Apple amid broader restructuring [9to5Mac]
Fox-Disney Sports Service Venu Blocked By Judge In Win For Fubo [Bloomberg];
The launch of Venu, a sports-streaming joint venture by Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, was temporarily blocked by a federal judge last week, who sided with FuboTV’s claim that Venu would harm competition and threaten Fubo’s viability. Of course, the media owners of Venu plan to appeal, arguing that Venu would expand consumer choice by offering an affordable alternative for sports fans compared to traditional cable packages. Overall, Fubo’s victory may be temporary as the broader trend of sports content moving from linear TV to streaming continues to pressure traditional and skinny bundle providers alike.
The shift of sports content from linear TV to streaming is reshaping how fans consume live sports, offering more flexibility and customization but also fragmenting the market. The creation of Venu can be certainly seen as a response to that fragmentation, as legacy media companies huddle together to re-bundle their offerings to cater to shifting viewer habits. Of course, one side effect is intensified competition, especially for niche players like FuboTV, who must navigate an increasingly crowded and volatile marketplace, or risk being swallowed up into a larger streaming bundle.
Related: YouTube TV brings NFL mascots together in one home for NFL Sunday Ticket ad [Ad Age]; Chick-fil-A is reportedly launching a streaming service for some reason [The Verge]; Anime streaming platform Crunchyroll surpasses 15 million subscribers [Crunchyroll]
Situational Awareness:
TikTok now allows alcohol brands to advertise on its platform [Marketing Brew]
The update, which went into effect in early June, allows alcohol and “alcohol branded merchandise” to be advertised to anyone 25-years-old and above. Wonder if the lack of takers from alcohol brands is due to perceived younger audiences on the platform, or the “sober curious” movement that they’ve led.
How TikTok’s ‘demure’ trend quickly caught brands’ attention [Ad Age]
The whiplash of watching brands jumping from ‘Brat Summer’ into ‘Demure Fall’ on social media is both a good reminder of the accelerating cultural trend cycles, as well as our yearning for a return to monoculture.
Meta’s Llama model is struggling to gain traction on Amazon Web Services [The Information]
Reportedly, Anthropic’s Claude is the most popular model with developers on AWS while Meta’s “open-source” model is lagging behind, despite being positioned as a lower-cost, high-quality alternative to the proprietary models. Selling software to businesses is not exactly in Meta’s warehouse, and it seems like a skillset that they will either need to learn, or outsource to a partner.
Perplexity AI plans to start running ads in Q4 [CNBC]
Following the debut of its revenue-sharing program with publishers last month, now Perplexity is gearing up for ad revenues by putting its business model to the test. CPM is reportedly around $50, which is higher than usual.
Uber partners with GM’s Cruise to offer self-driving car rides [Financial Times]
Could this new partnership with Uber help Cruise turn its bad luck around and catch up to Waymo in terms of rollout? Only time will tell.
Recent findings from Hub Entertainment Research and TiVo found that smartphones are the top choice for 69% of U.S. viewers watching any video content at least weekly, compared to 68% for connected TVs, The Wrap reports.
Walmart reports its US ad business grew 30% in the past year from Q2; Moreover, Financial Times says Walmart will claim 6.8% of 2024 US retail media spending, with $3.7 billion in revenue, citing the latest projection from eMarketer.
63% of American adults under 30 prefer watching TV with subtitles, even when they know the language, per findings from YouGov’s latest survey. The survey also finds that overall, only 38% of Americans prefer to have the subtitles on when they watch TV in a language they know. Among people who ever use subtitles when watching TV, 40% say they do so because it enhances their comprehension.
American teens are generally against the idea of regulations that would place restrictions on their use of social media platforms, despite knowing the potential harms to mental and physical health. A recent study designed by the Stanford Deliberative Democracy Lab found that more than 60% of new voters oppose requiring kids under age 16 to seek parental consent to use social media.
If you find our insights valuable and would like to have a deeper conversation on technology and media innovations, or need to sound smarter in a client meeting or a pitch, please feel free to reach out to Chelsea Freitas, our VP of Strategy, at chelsea@ipglab.com.